She took the clamp away and the clear tube turned red, blood racing away from my body as though it were eager to escape.

The parole officer was absorbed in a copy of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. I’d brought nothing to read. I closed my eyes and thought back to my conversation with Genevieve and what she’d said about Shorty. When I thought about it, his alibi sort of made sense.

When someone stole a car, the most likely place to look for a good, usable fingerprint was the rearview mirror. Everyone has to adjust it getting into an unfamiliar car. Even thieves. But Gen had said the police in Blue Earth had only found partials on the door.

I imagined Genevieve saying, So? She’d been my longtime partner in this kind of deduction, and it was natural for me to imagine discussing it with her.

So, I thought, partials on the door are consistent with him checking out a wrecked vehicle, not stealing one. He touched the door going in. He didn’t touch the mirror because he wasn’t going to drive anywhere.

He wore gloves, Gen said succinctly. In my mind I heard the annoyance she would bite back that I was taking Shorty’s part.

Why would he touch the door bare-handed and then carefully put on gloves to adjust the mirror? I thought.

Because he acts on impulse. He doesn’t plan ahead.

Then why would he put on the gloves at all? And if he acts on impulse, why would he go out of his way, to a train station, to steal a truck?

He stole the truck from the Amtrak station because he knew it wouldn’t be missed right away, with the owner out of town.

But that suggests planning ahead, which you said isn’t like him. Plus, what’s he going to do, drive it around for a few days in the same area where it was stolen, where everybody can see him behind the wheel? That doesn’t make any sense. That kind of theft would only make sense if someone were going to use it for a few hours and abandon it.

I opened my eyes, seized by an impossibility.

“No way,” I whispered, sitting up abruptly.

A car is a weapon, Shiloh had said.

The world swam gray before my eyes. When I heard a cry of alarm near me, I thought the same revelation had struck all of us at once. The chair began to tip beneath me.

“Put your feet up.” It wasn’t Genevieve’s voice in my mind anymore; it was a real voice somewhere beyond the fog I was in. “Can you hear me? Move your feet, roll them in circles. Big circles.”

I opened my eyes, or maybe they were already open. Either way, the grayness was abating and I could see my feet. I responded to the command, wriggling them.

“Okay, that’s good. Keep them moving.” The phlebotomist who’d set me up was standing by my side. Another was approaching with a brown paper bag. She opened it with a crisp snap of her arm.

“Here, breathe into this,” the second woman said.

“I’m all right,” I said, trying to sit up again. As soon as I did, I got dizzy.

“Lie back. We’ll tell you when it’s okay to get up. Breathe into this.”

I took the bag from her and did as she said. I needed a moment to think, anyway.

There was nobody I could call yet. There wasn’t anything I could prove. I’d have to do the legwork myself.

Maybe twenty minutes passed before I was allowed to leave. First they let me sit up on the side of the reclining chair, and after a few minutes of that, I was allowed to go to the recovery area, a folding table and chairs with orange juice and Fig Newtons set out. They felt my face and watched me walk, before I was finally released to go down to the parking ramp and my car, a bright green gauze wrap around my arm. I’d given about half the usual allotment of blood.

I felt mostly recovered, just a little tired, when I kicked open the stubborn kitchen door at home, my duffel bag slung over the shoulder of my unpierced arm. I dropped the bag unceremoniously on the kitchen floor. There wasn’t time for unpacking.

At the phone I dialed one of two numbers I’d come to know by heart: the one from the back of Shiloh’s plane ticket. I dialed it with the 507 area code. That number had reached the bar, and at the time I’d figured it didn’t mean anything.

But there had been way too much southern Minnesota karma in my life of late, and none of it had been good.

“Sportsman.” It was my friend Bruce again. Crowd noise in the background.

“This may seem like a stupid question,” I said, trying to sound light and at ease, “but where exactly are you guys?”

“Right on the west edge of town,” Bruce said.

“West edge of what town?” I asked.

“Oh, you really don’t know where we are,” he said, sounding surprised but still jocular. “Blue Earth.”

Blue Earth.

“I need directions, then,” I said.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked.

“Uh, Mankato,” I said, stumbling on the lie.

But Bruce didn’t notice the hesitation in my voice. He quickly rattled off the directions for me in a practiced way, then he asked, “Are you coming all the way from Mankato for a drink? Boy, we’re all fun guys to drink with here, but I didn’t know our reputation had got around that far.”

“Is Shorty there?”

A beat passed before he answered me, and his voice was more puzzled now than flirtatious. “No. Who is this?”

I hung up, thinking, I knew it.

Blue Earth would be a long drive, about three hours, but time was on my side. The problem was that Bruce of the Sportsman sounded pretty tight with the “fun guys” at the bar, and he was liable to tell Shorty that a strange woman had called asking about him, and had hung up rather than give her name. He might even remember the call from Sarah Pribek, who’d left her name and number days earlier. Shorty might have a rare wised-up moment and leave.

The Lowes’ number was the second one I’d carved into my memory, and I didn’t have to look it up this time. Deborah answered.

“Hi, Deb, it’s me.” By now she surely recognized my voice. “Can I talk to Genevieve?”

Genevieve came on the line. “What’s going on?” she asked, but her voice was incurious.

“I need something from you.” I didn’t answer her question. “You know Shorty’s address, right?”

“What?” More alert now.

“You’ve been keeping track of this guy for a while. You must have his address. I need it.”

“What’s going on?” she asked again.

“I just need the address.”

“I have to go look for it.” She set the phone down.

The subject of Shorty was the only thing that I’d ever seen rouse Genevieve from her depression, and now, true to form, she was showing signs of interest. When she gave me the address, she’d probably realize I was going down there. She might want to meet up with me, come along.

In a way, I would have liked to have her with me, but it was a bad idea. Maybe I’d need to reason with Shorty, make nice with him. I didn’t think I could do that with a maternal avenging angel riding shotgun.

Genevieve came back on the line and gave me the address. It came as no surprise that he lived on Route 165.

“What’s going on?” Genevieve asked again.

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Are you going down there? What did he do now?”

“I’ll call you,” I repeated.

“Sarah-”

I hung up on her. I didn’t have time for my twinge of guilt, instead collecting the things I needed: my keys, jacket, my service weapon. I was itching to be on the road. Just like Shiloh had been.